The present disclosure relates generally to landing systems for unmanned aerial vehicles. In particular, visual landing aids for camera-equipped unmanned aerial vehicles are described.
Known systems and methods for landing for unmanned aerial vehicles are not entirely satisfactory for the range of applications in which they are employed. For example, existing systems and methods typically employ either GPS positioning, some type of laser or radar range finding, human intervention or manual control, or some combination of the foregoing. GPS positioning is subject to potential loss of satellite signal, and to be fully effective requires the loading of a terrain database into the unmanned aerial vehicle's flight controller. Without the terrain database, the unmanned aerial vehicle will not know its height above ground in order to make a correct landing and, in any event, can suffer limited precision. Laser or radar range finding requires additional equipment on the unmanned aerial vehicle which diminishes payload, and while providing accurate vertical guidance, does not by itself provide for homing into a particular designated landing target. Human intervention and manual control, while being accurate, is subject to pilot error and precludes a fully autonomous mission profile.
Finally, conventional landing targets may be subject to false positives and/or may require special hardware for detection. Landing aids that use radio beacons may be subject to jamming or glitches.
Thus, there exists a need for landing aids that improve upon and advance the design of known systems and methods for landing unmanned aerial vehicles. Examples of new and useful landing aids relevant to the needs existing in the field are discussed below.
Disclosure addressing one or more of the identified existing needs is provided in the detailed description below. Examples of references relevant to visual landing aids include U.S. Patent References: U.S. Pat. No. 7,705,879 and patent application publication US20090009596. The complete disclosures of the above patents and patent applications are herein incorporated by reference for all purposes.